A New Mutant's Boyhood
by Afungi
Summary: His name is...unimportant. This is the tale of how a child was reborn as a mutant and what path it led him down. No one could comprehend the future before him without walking along his bloody first steps on a broken road (Prequel to A New Mutant Quest, no prior knowledge needed, will likely end up an anthology as it progresses).
1. Prologue

The scent of salt wafted through the usual musky air of an alley in the afternoon. Few people in the world would have the capability of detecting it. One such person was standing in front of two makeshift graves, one fresher than the other, of shattered gravel, dirt, and mud.

A sigh escaped his lips as he stared at a weathered wall that served as a tombstone.

He never intended for this to happen. Not once did he have any desire to hurt them, much less anyone. In the ten years he had been alive, he never once wanted for anything, much less this.

It happened because of him anyway.

Taking a short breath he turned at the older boy by his side.

Bald-headed, dark-skinned, and weathered for his age, Marcus wept in silence over what he had taken from both of them.

They fed them, clothed them, and cared for them yet he killed them. One disciplined them, trained them, and enlightened them yet he killed him. The other groomed them, sheltered them, and paid them yet he killed her. In the entire world, there was no one else who valued them yet he led both to their deaths with barely any thought. He barely woke up from his life-long slumber only to slaughter what had been helping him stay along when he woke up.

The murderer parted his lips and shut them.

Nothing could be said, nothing that mattered at least.

He took a step that cracked the asphalt beneath his feet.

Marcus glanced at him and focused back on the crude tombstone wall while he continued on his silent path.

There were no words that could express either of their feelings towards each other or for this.

Putting his hands in his ragged sweater pockets, Kojo Reyes took heavy step after step away from the burial ground.

It didn't matter anyway.

The brown-skinned, dark-eyed, and youthful child lifted his horned head high before he bent his knees and leapt to the roof of a neighboring building.

A fanged smile that had never once adorned his face took shape as he took in the setting sun.

He felt it: a warmth he had never once felt or understood but observed in others.

The hundreds he killed before were nothing. All of them were rotting meat to begin with. Two took the place for every one he rid of this earth. Not him though: not Dan "the Old Soldier Man."

He was their guardian, and he killed him. He was their teacher, and he killed him. He was their commander, and he kill him. He was the closest thing in this entire world they had to a father, and he tore his insides out as if he were a useless bag of meat like the rest of them.

An odd-feeling sound he had seen so many others emit thumped in his chest.

Clutching his sides, the alien crackling emerged from his lips.

He did not understand then what he had done and wouldn't until He was whole.

Kojo Reyes, for the first time and the second time in his life, felt joy.


	2. The Journey Begins

"…What are we gonna do now?" Marcus, head buried in his hands, asked.

The horned boy leaning against a dirty cement wall raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"They're fucking dead, Kojo!" His partner lifted his head, revealing his watery blue eyes. "They're fucking dead, you're whatever the fuck you are now, and I don't know how to process all this goddamn bullshit!"

"You tell me that a lot."

"No shit, you're the holy grail of bullshit, and you splash your garbage on everyone who's ever met you!"

Kojo kept a still face as his best friend seethed on his wooden seat.

He understood why the other boy was angry, but he couldn't understand the point in taking it out on him. If they were under other circumstances, the complainer would be like the rest of those who crossed them, a mangled corpse. The mutant child had a horrible habit of making those.

"We should do more of our thing: escalate things to our advantage."

Marcus' face scrunched. "You want to start a gang war that goes past Hunts Point? Streets are bloody enough as is even with us on them."

"No, I want to start our own gang."

"…What?"

"We've been doing the exact same thing since I brought you into this. Nothing has changed or ever will. Eliminating gangs, playing them against each other, getting the police to do their jobs… It's been nothing but a waste of time and energy. If we're really going to bring an end to this so we don't have to sleep in shifts, we have to take control instead of making sure another spot opens up for some dead men to take."

"That's insane and stupid." The other dark-skinned boy scoffed. "We're kids, even if you're whatever you are now and how good we are at what we do, no one is going to follow us but a bunch of literal baby-faced gangsters. Most of the gangs in the Bronx are all about race, and you're a mutt, which also makes me a race traitor in a bunch of black jackasses' retarded heads. Even if you did somehow manage to unite every small-time asshole from here to Riverdale, that would only draw attention from the Silvermane family and the goddamn Kingpin."

"Marcus, they're dogs, like Dan said they are; each and every one of them behind the idea of their skin color they hide under. I just need to peel them out. You don't have to help me, but it would be easier with you by my side."

"...This isn't like you; this isn't like you at all."

Pushing himself off the wall and leaving cracks in it with his foot, Kojo walked to the open gate of the cluttered warehouse. "Are you coming or not?"

"Got that peashooter you call a piece?" Marcus sighed.

The mutant's eyes widened for a second before he shook his head. "…Don't need it; got yours?"

"If you want to die so much, I can put two to the back of your head right now." The boy, drawing an old .357 Single Action Army out of his pocket, said.

"You only need one bullet to hit for someone's death."

"I know, dumbass: need to make sure you of all people in this shithole stay dead is all."

An alien-like hum emanated from the horned boy's throat. "Let's go then, you can take your murderous impulses out on the first few who resist."

The normal lad rolled his eyes as he followed his plain-faced compatriot out their newly inherited storage house. "…Fucking hypocrite."

* * *

Forty-three minutes of skulking in alleys, strolling through abandoned neighborhoods, and doing their best to fit in as much as the odd pair could passed until they arrived at their dilapidated, rap-music booming alleyway destination.

Kojo pointed to the fire escape and said no words.

Marcus nodded before he made his way up the scaffold.

Until the strange child was sure his partner was inside the building itself, he closed his eyes and took in the scents of the area.

It was a vivid experience after he was reborn. Everything was so much clearer in more ways than just sensory detail. Filth was even more unclean than he thought it was and purity more than it ever was. A single person could never scrub the corruption out of these streets, however. He'd do the best he could in spite of it.

Sensing nothing worth being cautious of, the mutant made his way down the alley to the secluded gang meet.

"And then the mothrfu—"One of the dozen or so gang members stopped. "…Who the fuck is this little bitch?"

The young man in question's eyes drifted over each and every man in the clearing, counting a total of fourteen young men several years older than him with a quarter or so having firearms in drawing distance.

"_Listen up, kid. I doubt I need to say this to you, but never let yourself get surrounded in a fight; anything that hampers your mobility in any way needs to go as soon as you can handle it or kill the fuckers. We're not living in the middle-ages anymore, so that cloak and dagger shit you've got going on will only take you so far. You have to and should always be on the attack: kill those with guns on them first, use that peashooter to take people down fast, always be moving, and always go for vitals." _

One of the would-be gangsters stood up from a stool, bottle in hand. "Bitch got fucking horns, what the fuck?"

"He's either an alien those lazy ass Avengers haven't sent home or one of those mutant assholes."

"Yo, bitch." Another petty thug scoffed. "You gonna say something or are you just going to stand there looking like some broke-ass antichrist?"

"I'll only say this once: drop your flags, drop your colors, and abandon whatever 'culture' you made up between yourselves. Regardless of your choice, you're mine now, whether to kill or to lead.

The men shared looks before bursting in laugher at their would-be leader/murderer's decree.

Reyes stared unfazed as usual while his subjects clenched their sides.

This reaction was something he expected. On some level, he was hoping for it to go down the absolute worst way possible, but that would have been impossible because Marcus couldn't so easily die nor could he. It would've been interesting, though. At the very least, he could have tried out some of his new abilities as best he could.

One would-be gangster reached for the protruding gun in his pocket and subsequently lost the arm he was reaching to it with along with his heart in a fine red mist.

A grin spread across Kojo's blood-splattered face even as the bones in his hands, arms, and lunging leg cracked beneath the force of his own herculean strength.

The others closest to the mutant's first victim had no chance to react before he, using his heel as a fulcrum, spun and tore all three of them in half with a savage swing of his hand: shattering their spines, tearing through their intestines, rupturing their kidneys, and splintering their lower ribs.

One of the fools across the red street-rat drew the 9mm Smith & Wesson from his belt only for the top part of his head to explode its contents over the wall behind it.

The sound of squelching flesh would've helped embed the memory of this moment in the hoodlums' minds if not for another sonic boom thundering from wall to wall of the refuge, taking its place.

Blinking, the powerful orphan looked down at a hole on the side of his bloodied sweater and a deformed piece of lead that lay on the growing pool of blood at his feet.

It seemed he had more new special qualities than he thought.

Cackling, literal earth-shaking laughter resonated in his chest.

The streets were his, those of the supercriminal-free Bronx at least.

"For those of you who can still hear me, I advise you drop to your knees while I disembowel the rest of you with my bare hands."

Only one of the remaining men didn't drop to the floor.

"…That is a lot more people with hearing than I expected."

"I… I can hear you, mutie, I'm just not giving you the satisfaction like the rest of these pussies!"

The mutie in question tilted his head. "Are you yelling at me on purpose or on accident because of the ringing in your ears?"

"Fuck are you talking about!?"

"The 'pussy' that just shot me is two feet away from me and using a .45: I should be having trouble even hearing myself, especially since I just started laughing like a mad man." He raised a sweet-smelling, bloody hand to his chin and hummed. "Seriously, how can the eight of you hear me?"

One of the kneeling men spoke up, "I-Is that really important right now?"

"…Not at all, actually." With no further words, the mutant lunged at the standing fool, tackling him to the ground. "Thank you for volunteering to be made an example of." The grin he wore while slaughtering the man's dead friends returned with a vengeance as he dug his fingers into the side of the rebel's face. "Now all of us get to see who you are beneath your skin."

For the next several minutes, laugher and screams accompanied by the sickening squelch of tearing flesh could be heard resonating through the alleyway. The example died of shock by the time the mutant boy had moved on from his arms to his chest, but the message he wished to instill in his new servants was already seared into their minds after the sacrifice was defaced. Unfortunately for the slaves, this was only the first of many atrocities they'd witness.

The rookie gang leader rose from the corpse, waved his hands free of excess fresh blood, and began walking to the alleyway. "Follow me."

Each man rose from their knees before shambling behind their master.

A familiar, stern face illuminated by the alley's beam of light greeted the youngling.

His excellence rose his brown-skinned hand in greeting and moved to pass his best friend only to be stopped by a darker hand planting itself on his shoulder.

Blinking, Kojo turned to the only ally he had left in his life. "Marcus?"

"…Who are you?"

"You already know who I am."

"Do I?" The new second-in-command tilted his head. "Do you?"

"…I don't understand."

The other boy shaked his head, turned, and started out of the narrow space. "I doubt you ever will now."

Reyes watched as his friend continued down his path into the daylight proper, leaving him in the dark with their new pawns.

He would eventually, though he would not be who He was.

This was only the first step on his path of blood.


End file.
